Good morning! Here is today’s summary from Nigerian Newspapers:
1. The All Progressives Congress (APC) and its factional governorship candidate in Rivers State, Mr. Tonye Cole on Thursday lost their appeals at the Supreme Court, seeking to enable them participate in the 2019 general elections. The apex court dismissed the separate appeals filed by the APC and Cole on the grounds that the notices of appeal, which brought the appeals, were incompetent.
2. The Minister of Finance, Mrs Zainab Ahmed says the Federal Government will look into the gradual removal of fuel subsidy as part of strategies to boost revenue. Ahmed said this on Thursday on the sideline of the IMF/World Bank meetings taking place in Washington DC, United States of America. Ahmed made the disclosure while reacting to the IMF’s advice to Nigeria and other countries who still subsidise fossil fuel to stop doing so.
3. The continent’s top teams will learn their fate on Friday (Today) in the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations group-stage draw, as four pots of six teams become six groups of four. The draw will take place outside Cairo, Egypt. It is scheduled to take place behind the famous Giza Pyramids from 6pm GMT (7pm Nigerian time). Hosts Egypt, Cameroon, Nigeria, Tunisia, Senegal and Morocco are the seeded countries in the draw.
4. Justice A. H. Suleiman, Chairman, National and State Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal in Kaduna state, says the tribunal has received 18 petitions from candidates not satisfied with the outcome of the just concluded 2019 polls in the state. Suleiman who addressed lawyers and Newsmen during the tribunal inaugural sitting on Thursday in Kaduna, said 10 of the petitions were in respect of the February 23 National Assembly elections, while eight were for the March 9 State House of Assembly poll.
5. The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Sen. Mohammed Abba-Aji, has prayed the Borno Election Petition Tribunal to cancel the return of Gov. Kashim Shettima of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as winner of Borno Central senatorial seat. Abba-Aji argued that there was over voting in seven wards and evidence of corrupt practices and non-compliance to the provision of the Electoral Act.
6. The Speaker of Kogi House of Assembly, Mr Matthew Kolawole, said on Thursday that the state government was using N840 million monthly to service loans inherited from past administrations in the state. Kolawole revealed this in Lokoja at a media parley with members of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ). He said that the amount was sourced from the state’s allocation from the Federation Account. According to him, the Gov. Yahaya Bello’s administration inherited huge debts from loans obtained by previous administrations in the state.
7. A man who claimed to be a professor, Jide Jisus, has been arrested for alleged examination malpractice during the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). A statement yesterday by the spokesperson of JAMB, Mr. Fabian Benjamin, the ‘professor’ was apprehended by the monitoring team of the registrar of JAMB in an examination hall at Brix Academy, Jabi, Abuja.
8. Mohamed Fall, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Representative in Nigeria, on Thursday called for the protection of children rights against violence and another form of abuses in the country. Fall in a statement issued by Kusali Kubwalo, the Communication Analyst, UNICEF Field Office Maiduguri, said, “More than 3, 500 children aged between 13 and 17 were recruited by non-state armed groups between 2013 and 2017; and used in the ongoing conflict in the northeast. In 2018; some 432 children were killed and maimed; 180 others abducted while 43 girls sexually abused in the war-torn region.
9. The National Examinations Council (NECO) has postponed the 2019 National Common Entrance Examination into unity schools to April 27. Mr Azeez Sani, Head, Information and Public Relations Division of the council, made this known in a statement on Thursday. Sani said the examination, which was initially scheduled for April 13, was re-scheduled to give states with low registration of candidates the opportunity to register for the examination.
10. Arigidi-Akoko, an agrarian community in Akoko North West Local Government area of Ondo State, has been thrown into mourning following the gruesome killing of a 50-year-old trader by assailants suspected to be ritualists. The lifeless body of the woman was said to have been dumped in the bush, few meters from her residence with her two breasts missing as it was suspected to have been cut-off by her killers for ritual purposes. Confirming the incident, the Akoko Northwest Divisional Police Officer, SP Ibitayo Adetanranmi assured that the perpetrators of the dastardly act would be fished out soon.
Comments